NewEnergyNews: GREENPEACE LIKES SUN IN THE DESERT/

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Gleanings from the web and the world, condensed for convenience, illustrated for enlightenment, arranged for impact...

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YESTERDAY

THINGS-TO-THINK-ABOUT WEDNESDAY, August 23:

  • TTTA Wednesday-ORIGINAL REPORTING: The IRA And The New Energy Boom
  • TTTA Wednesday-ORIGINAL REPORTING: The IRA And the EV Revolution
  • THE DAY BEFORE

  • Weekend Video: Coming Ocean Current Collapse Could Up Climate Crisis
  • Weekend Video: Impacts Of The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current Collapse
  • Weekend Video: More Facts On The AMOC
  • THE DAY BEFORE THE DAY BEFORE

    WEEKEND VIDEOS, July 15-16:

  • Weekend Video: The Truth About China And The Climate Crisis
  • Weekend Video: Florida Insurance At The Climate Crisis Storm’s Eye
  • Weekend Video: The 9-1-1 On Rooftop Solar
  • THE DAY BEFORE THAT

    WEEKEND VIDEOS, July 8-9:

  • Weekend Video: Bill Nye Science Guy On The Climate Crisis
  • Weekend Video: The Changes Causing The Crisis
  • Weekend Video: A “Massive Global Solar Boom” Now
  • THE LAST DAY UP HERE

    WEEKEND VIDEOS, July 1-2:

  • The Global New Energy Boom Accelerates
  • Ukraine Faces The Climate Crisis While Fighting To Survive
  • Texas Heat And Politics Of Denial
  • --------------------------

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    Founding Editor Herman K. Trabish

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    WEEKEND VIDEOS, June 17-18

  • Fixing The Power System
  • The Energy Storage Solution
  • New Energy Equity With Community Solar
  • Weekend Video: The Way Wind Can Help Win Wars
  • Weekend Video: New Support For Hydropower
  • Some details about NewEnergyNews and the man behind the curtain: Herman K. Trabish, Agua Dulce, CA., Doctor with my hands, Writer with my head, Student of New Energy and Human Experience with my heart

    email: herman@NewEnergyNews.net

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  • WEEKEND VIDEOS, August 24-26:
  • Happy One-Year Birthday, Inflation Reduction Act
  • The Virtual Power Plant Boom, Part 1
  • The Virtual Power Plant Boom, Part 2

    Wednesday, May 27, 2009

    GREENPEACE LIKES SUN IN THE DESERT

    Solar power could surge by 2050 in deserts-report
    Alister Doyle (w/Richard Williams), May 25, 2009 (Reuters)
    and
    Beam me up Sunny!
    25 May 2009 (Greenpeace Internatiional)

    SUMMARY
    Concentrating Solar Power Global Outlook 2009; Why Renewable Energy is Hot, the 3rd report on solar power plant technology from Greenpeace International, the European Solar Thermal Electricity Association (ESTELA) and the International Energy Agency's (IEA) SolarPACES sees continuing enormous opportunity and finds, for the first time, that market value exceeded $1 billion in 2008. It predicts that value could double in 2009.

    Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) is a set of solar energy technologies that move far beyond the rooftop solar panel. Panels turn solar light into electricity. CSP is used in solar power plants to capture the heat of the sun and use it the same way nuclear energy-generated heat or coal plant energy-generated heat is used, to boil water and make steam that turns a turbine whose mechanical energy is used to generate electricity.

    Solar power plants require locations saturated with sunbeams (high “beam radiation”), usually between the equator and 40 degrees latitude north or south. For the right clear-sky, hot-sun desert-like locales, solar power plants offer the same kind of opportunity that offshore wind offers Europe and the U.S. Mid-Atlantic Coast.

    click to enlarge

    CSP solar power plant technologies vary. They may use parabolic trough mirrors and tubes, flat plate mirrors and a solar power tower or cupped mirrors focused on a Stirling engine. (See BIG SOLAR POWER PLANT ACTION...)

    The Greenpeace report calculates that solar plants now produce electricity at 0.15-to-0.23 euros (21-to-32 cents) per kilowatt-hour and the price will, by 2020, fall to 0.10-to-0.14 euros (14-to-19 cents) per kilowatt-hour with supportive policies that generate new volumes and economies of scale. The latter price is expected to be competitive with the cost of electricity from other power sources as the cost of emissions and the cost of construction rise.

    The report predicts that 2009 investment in solar power plants will pass the 2 billion euros (USD 2.58 billion) mark and could reach 20.8 billion euros (USD 26.8 billion) in value. It describes a scenario in which solar power plants supply as much as 7% of world power in 2030 and 25% of world power 2050. Such growth would employ 2 million people worldwide and eliminate 20% of world greenhouse gas (GhG) emissions.

    click to enlarge

    The cumulative worldwide installed capacity of solar power plants at the end of 2008 was 430 megawatts.

    The report’s predictions are based on an assumption of a 21 billion euro per year level of investment by 2015 and a 174 billion euro per year investment by 2050. Under that scenario, the industry would have an installed capacity of 1,500 gigawatts by 2050. By contrast, the International Energy Agengy (IEA) business-as-usual forecast is that solar power will provide no more than 0.2% of world power by mid century.

    click to enlarge

    COMMENTARY
    Making its case for the power of concentrated solar energy, Greenpeace pointed out that (1) the concentrated heat of the sun is powerful enough to easily melt steel and that (2) a solar power plant heats liquids to between 400 and 1000 degrees C. while bacteria dies at 50 degrees, water boils at 100 degrees and volcanic lava is 1000 degrees.

    Solar power plant technology was first used on a large scale in 1912 by Egyptians to drive irrigation pumps because other pumps required coal that was, in Egypt, rare and expensive. But fossil fuels became too cheap to ignore, in Egypt and around the world, much to the present-day detriment of earth’s atmosphere and ecosystem.

    click to enlarge

    The first commercial scale solar power plants using CSP technology were built in California’s Mojave Desert in the 1980s. Interest waned in the technology in favor of cheap natural gas in the 1990s but a concern with GhGs has produced a revival. New solar power plants are just going into operation or now being planned in California, Nevada, Arizona and Spain and many more are in the development process around the world.

    The report calculates that if solar power plant technology were developed to its fullest potential it could eliminate half the emissions produced annually by Australia by 2020 and 5 times the emissions produced by Germany annually by 2050.

    click to enlarge

    QUOTES
    - 2nd (2005) Greenpeace International report on solar power plant technology: "CSP is ready for take off!"
    - Greenpeace International, 2009: "CSP has taken off…"
    - Greenpeace International, 2009: Concentrating Solar Power systems are the next big thing in renewable energy… In a very short time, the technology has demonstrated huge technological and economic promise. It has one major advantage - a massive renewable resource, the sun - and very few downsides…”

    click to enlarge

    - 3rd (2009) Greenpeace International report: “CSP is now the third multi-billion dollar industry (alongside wind and solar photovoltaics) for clean power generation having expanded rapidly over the past five years to become a mass-produced and mainstream energy generation solution. It can deliver reliable industry-scale power around the clock thanks to modern storage technologies and hybrid operations.”
    - Jose Nebrera, president, ESTELA: "CSP plants can deliver reliable industry-scale power supply around the clock due to storage technologies and hybrid operations within the power plant…"

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